Podcast European Engineering Educators

In this episode we spoke to Dr. Ann-Kristin Winkens, a postdoctoral researcher in the Gender and Diversity in Engineering Research Group (GDI) at RWTH Aachen in Germany. Ann-Kristin draws upon her prior education in environmental engineering when researching areas of systems resilience and competencies needed when designing resilient systems.

In this episode we spoke about how ChatGPT and other Gen-AI tools may affect engineering education assessment methods, and how it might be used to facilitate learning.

Terms such as diversity, equity, equality, and inclusion have long featured in discussions relating to engineering education, and are often used interchangeably. Their meaning both evolve over time and vary significantly across context. Such changes and variation have implications for the areas in which efforts towards DEI, are focused, as well as to learn from good practice and monitor progress

The SEFI podcast was originally conceived as a project which would run for two years with monthly episodes. As we approach its second anniversary, Neil and Natalie would like to thank everyone listeners and guests for their support in making it into a valuable source of information about the SEFI community and contemporary topics in engineering education.

Growing student numbers, along with space and timetabling constraints, are limiting the number of opportunities that engineering students have to engage in practical work within their degree programmes. Such deficiencies in educational offerings have implications for the knowledge and skills that students bring to the workplace, and efforts have thus focused on the development of non-traditional practical work (NTPW).

The importance of engineering ethics education has been growing in recent decades, as exemplified by the numerous SEFI podcast episodes which feature the topic. However, there is increasing emphasis onthe need to shift from a focus on roles and responsibilities of the individual engineer, to taking a more macro-ethical approach.

Professor Roger Hadgraft from the University of Technology Sydney in Australia published his first paper on Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in 1990, and co-authored the 2024 open access book Reshaping Engineering Education, which advocates a substantial redesign of the learning paradigm in engineering.

The inextricable relationship between engineering and society means that ethical behaviour has always been of paramount importance within the profession. However, driven by climate change urgency and the sustainability challenge, it is only more recently that teaching engineering ethics has become imperative.

To celebrate 50 years of SEFI, in season 3 we have spoken to experienced people in the sector who have witnessed and made significant contributions to the emergence of Engineering Education as a societally important global field with a growing body of global knowledge, and an increasing level of academic rigour. We should never forget its vocational grounding, and, accordingly, it seems fitting to hand over this final episode to Industry; SEFI Fellow, Xavier Fouger from Dassault Systèmes

In this episode we talk to Kristina Edström, Editor-in-Chief of EJEE and Associate Professor in Engineering Education Development at KTH in Sweden. Since becoming an educational developer in 1997, Kristina has been involved in engineering education reform at an institution level, as well as nationally and internationally.